Welcome to Moorgate Books.
This enterprise publishes Regency-era historical novels written by Diane H. Morris. Diane’s first novel, Rosings Park, is based on Jane Austen’s beloved story Pride and Prejudice and follows Miss Anne de Bourgh’s romantic adventures. The prequel to Rosings Park—Cousin Anne—was published in January 2016 and answers this question: What will Anne do when told she is expected to marry her cousin Fitzwilliam Darcy?
The Regency was a time of innovation and elegance—innovation in science and medicine; elegance in manners, fashion and decorative arts. Regency England had a seamy side as well: pugilism, public hangings, bear-baiting, goose-pulling, and gambling. It was a time of vulgarity and vice and pleasure.
The true Regency era began in 1811, when George Augustus Frederick, the Prince of Wales (shown above), became Prince Regent after his father, King George III, was determined unfit to rule. It ended in 1820 when the Prince Regent became King George IV. Some scholars choose a broader period, beginning in roughly 1780 (before the French Revolution) and ending with the death of George IV in 1830.
When Diane began studying the Regency era, she could state one fact: Napoleon’s empire-building scheme collapsed at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Otherwise, she knew next to nothing about Jane Austen’s time. But ignorance was not a deterrent. She began collecting and reading books on courtesans, architecture, midwifery, England’s aristocracy, the middle class, village life, urban crime, the status of women, London, Britons, and, of course, the life and times of Jane Austen. She is particularly fond of reading books published in the 1790s and early 1800s and finds the Regency era fascinating.
